What do 72 virgins and raisins have in common?

'They are a satire of themselves.'

ISIS has been twisting the Muslim holy book to its advantage by claiming attacks on non-Muslim communities and sexually assaulting young girls are not only warranted by Allah but are also rewarded with a gift of 72 virgins in the afterlife - but what does the Koran really say?

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Author and Muslim reformer Irshad Manji told Rush Limbaugh: "Nowhere in the Koran does it promise 72 virgins, 70 virgins, 48 virgins. What it promises, as far as heaven goes is something... The Arabic word for 'virgin' has been mistranslated.

"The original used [sic] that was used in the Koran was the word for raisin, not virgin, in other words, that martyrs would get raisins in heaven, not virgins."

Manji appeared in an hour-long CNN special "Why They Hate Us," where he cited "several scholars" who agree "raisin" is the translation of what many believe is the word "virgin."

Rather than simply accepting what Manji said, Limbaugh did a little research of his own and explained: "I am just not wantonly accepting of this stuff. I actually dug into this. I found out that it is an ongoing controversy within Islam, the definition of the word that has been translated at 'virgins' as it's used by militant Islamists as they recruit.

"They've got bad news for jihadists. Seventy-two raisins in a Sunkist box, and they are doing this straight faced. They are a satire of themselves. The wheels have come off inside what's left in their minds. These people are not well."

As explained by The Guardian back in 2002, the Koran does not mention the number of virgins available in paradise and the word "hur," assumed to mean "virgin" when referred to in a passage mentioning paradise, means "dark-eyed maiden" everywhere else in the Koran.

When read as Syriac, rather than Arabic, Christoph Luxenberg, an author specializing in the Koran, explained "many obscurities of the Koran disappear.

According to Luxenberg, what many believe is a mention of virgins is actually a mention of "white raisins" or "crystal clarity" differentiating the faithful and the damned.

When Manji's recent interview revealed he and other scholars agreed the word meant raisins, Limbaugh responded: "It really is unsettled what it actually means, and there is one interpretation that does mean raisins. ... So does this mean that the bin Ladens and the other imams and the Ayman al-Zawahiris and so forth are purposely promising virgins when they know its raisin?"

Regardless of whether the Islamic State knows the "true" translation, thousands of terrorist recruits join, in part, to reach a paradise in which virgins await them - and happily blast their way through humanity while clinging to that questionable belief.

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